UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

This article reports on a further exploration into the reliability and validity of the shortened form of the Career Development Inventory-Australia (Creed & Patton, 2004), a career maturity measure being developed to meet the need for a shorter and more up-to-date measure to provide data on this career development construct. Data gathered from 170 final-year education students (34 males, 132 females) provided partial support for the measure's internal consistency, factor structure and construct validity. C entral to the understanding of career behaviour,the concept of career maturity has emerged as a major variable of interest in career development research in recent years. Career maturity is broadly defined as the individual's readiness to make informed, age-appropriate career decisions and manage his/her career development tasks (Savickas, 1984). Career maturity is seen as an important con-struct to assess and develop in career programs for adolescents and adults as it involves awareness of an individual's level of career progress in relation to his/ her career-related development tasks (Crites, 1976). Australian Journal of Career Development VOLUME 14, NUMBER 3, SPRING 2005 49 at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016acd.sagepub.comDownloaded from (Researchers have identified a need for a shortened, less repetitive and less complex version ofthe CD/-A. J Articles Several assessment instruments have been devel-oped to measure the construct of career maturity